1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for supporting an antenna wiring in an RFID system.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is known a technology, such as disclosed in JP-A No. 28088/1993, which automatically generates configuration information of devices to be connected to a system. This document discloses the generation of a configuration information table that is appropriate for all possible connections between input/output devices, because a central control unit attempts to read the configuration information through all access paths to the input/output devices.
There is also an RFID system technology (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-157645) which wirelessly communicates with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags to read data from the RFID tags attached to goods, and confirms the presence of the goods.
A smart shelf is an application example of the RFID system. This system includes many antennas arranged on shelves to manage the goods placed on shelves by reading RFID tags attached to the goods on the shelves from the antennas.
In general, the RFID system controls so that one antenna emits electric waves at one moment. However, the RFID system including many antennas, such as the smart shelf, needs a longer time to drive all the antennas in series. Thus, it is designed to reduce the scan time by simultaneously driving plural antennas in which no electric wave interference occurs during the simultaneous drive, by plural readers.
For this reason, in order to build a smart shelf system, it is necessary to (1) determine the driving sequence of antennas on shelves based on a system design, (2) provide wiring between the antennas and readers so that the antennas to be simultaneously driven are connected to different readers, and (3) set a control terminal to drive the readers so that the antennas are driven according to the first determined driving sequence.